Eurovision 2015 Contestants: Serbia

When it first participated in the Eurovision Song Contest as an independent country — and not part of Yugoslavia or with Montenegro as it used to — in 2007, Serbia actually won, for the first time. Fairly promising for the future. But since then, the country has unfortunately not managed to repeat the performance, finishing 6th, 13th, 14th, 3rd the following years, and not even bothering to participate in 2014 because, you know, austerity.

The 28-year-old Serbian singer Bojana Stamenov will represent the country this year. According to her Wikipedia page, she’s been active in the music business since 1859, so we assume she’s had plenty of time to prepare for the contest and we expect her performance to be mind-blowing.

The video for “Beauty Never Lies,” the song she will perform, however, was frankly quite painful to go through. First of all, the lyrics were initially in Serbian and later translated into English. Why? What’s the point? No one really pays attention to the lyrics, especially when we all know they’ll either be about peace, love or dancing, so why not keep the authenticity and exoticism of your own language?

Then, the Eurobeat. It just hurts, everywhere, in every sense of the term. The dramatic singing and the clip, made up of various fans awkwardly lip-syncing to the music, don’t help either. Ok, it’s the kind of song you’d expect to hear in this contest, but why does Eurovision music seem to be so heavily influenced by late 90s' Spanish maquina? Also, if you rapidly click at different parts of the song, it sounds like random people screaming like these goats.